Paul Starick: Nuclear-powered AUKUS submarines give Peter Malinauskas an economic agenda

Just shy of his first anniversary as the state’s leader, Premier Peter Malinauskas has been handed a gift-wrapped economic agenda – by the struggling Liberals.

IN the days leading up to the first anniversary of Labor’s landslide state election win, Premier Peter Malinauskas will be handed a gift-wrapped economic agenda on a silver platter.

The AUKUS nuclear-powered submarine deal, to be unveiled in San Diego on Tuesday, is one of the most momentous in the state’s history, as the Premier argued in mid-February.

Just five days short of the March 19 state election anniversary, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will join United States President Joe Biden and United Kingdom Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to unveil long-awaited details of the AUKUS security pact’s centrepiece nuclear-powered submarine construction.

There are considerable signs that the geopolitical stars have aligned to make the Osborne Naval Shipyard one of the world’s most significant defence industry enterprises, as the Australian home of the AUKUS submarine construction.

US President Joe Biden with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese at ASEAN in Phnom Penh in November last year. Picture: Saul Loeb / AFP

Scepticism is wise given the almost two decades of failed Adelaide submarine plans hatched by both major Australian parties.

But AUKUS is a tripartite security pact forged in response to a belligerent China’s rise or, as Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong has delicately put it, when “the global order is coming under pressure in a way we haven’t seen since World War II”.

It is, therefore, less vulnerable to domestic politics than previous promised Adelaide future submarine projects, stretching back to the-then Labor Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd’s promise in August, 2007, that a Labor government would build Australia’s next generation of hi-tech submarines in Adelaide in a contract worth up to $15bn.

After scuttled plans to buy submarines from Japan under Tony Abbott’s government and the torpedoing of the French-designed Attack class, the domestic politics of AUKUS are clearer.

Labor governments in Canberra and Adelaide are implementing a deal struck when the Liberals were in power in both jurisdictions. Clearly, this limits the Liberal criticism of AUKUS’s submarine construction and technology sharing planks. They will, of course, be ready to pounce if their big idea is bungled.

United States Navy Virginia Class submarine USS Mississippi arrives at Fleet Base West, Rockingham, Western Australia for a routine port visit.

The extent of the opportunity and economic agenda handed to Mr Malinauskas was outlined by Vice Admiral Jonathan Mead, the head of Defence’s Nuclear-Powered Submarine Taskforce, in an interview with The Advertiser about the extent of work for South Australia.

“We are talking about thousands of thousands of job opportunities. We’ve got to design a shipyard, we’ve got to build that shipyard and then we’ve got to build the submarines, and we’re going to do that for decades,” he said.

This will be the overwhelming public narrative when the Malinauskas government marks its first year in office. The defeated Liberals are rebuilding, under fledgling Opposition Leader David Speirs. He is confronting speculation of an imminent challenge by Vincent Tarzia, an energetic and talented frontbencher.

There is the growing prospect disgruntled MacKillop MP Nick McBride, from a prominent South-East pastoralist family, will defect to become an independent. Perhaps more concerningly for Mr Speirs, Mr McBride might pair with Mount Gambier MP Troy Bell to form a breakaway conservative party – a prospect revealed by The Advertiser in mid-2021. This scheme has involved aspirations of relaunching the Liberal and Country League brand by which the SA Liberals were known until 1974.

Opposition Leader David Speirs and health spokeswoman Ashton Hurn at a press conference in September, 2022. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Emma Brasier

Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles on tour at the Osborne Naval Shipyard with Premier Peter Malinauskas in mid-2022. Picture Mark Brake

Mr Speirs and health spokeswoman Ashton Hurn have had some success turning the election-defining issue of ambulance ramping back on Labor. They need more colleagues assertively and actively supporting them to argue the case and forge an identity and profile, lest the Liberals become comfortable in Opposition.

Mr Speirs and Ms Hurn argue ambulance ramping is the issue Labor now doesn’t want to talk about, despite partnering with the ambulance union during the election campaign to make a ramping the central focus.

Mr Speirs asked the Premier about ramping in the opening two questions of Tuesday’s parliamentary session, only for Mr Malinauskas to defer to Health Minister Chris Picton.

Asked by The Advertiser if he retained the same focus on health as when he came to power, Mr Malinauskas said: “There’s not a day where I’m not talking about health to some official.”

Yet his twin focus, declared in a series of speeches, is the planned $593m Whyalla hydrogen power plant and the AUKUS submarine project. The latter, in particular, has the potential to underpin the Malinauskas jobs, economic and education agenda, bolstering his position and setting up a platform for the 2026 election.

Originally published as Paul Starick: Nuclear-powered AUKUS submarines give Peter Malinauskas an economic agenda